Credit: Inside the MagicOn February 24, 2022, nearly three years ago, Russia invaded Ukraine, setting off a fight for the future of democracy in the former Soviet Republic. Less than a month later, the United States and other Western powers instituted crippling sanctions against Russia for their unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
A few months later, dozens of American companies, including Starbucks, McDonald’s, Apple, Google, and Amazon, stopped doing business in Russia. One month after the invasion of Ukraine, Disney announced that it would “pause” its businesses in Russia and stop releasing films in the country.
Disney was set to release Doctor Strange: Into the Multiverse of Madness (2022) and Lightyear (2022) in Russia in hopes of making some of its money back on those two films. The Russian market had been lucrative for Disney, with the company having its best year there in 2016, making nearly $150 million at the box office.
As it turns out, Disney didn’t entirely leave Russia after all. According to the United Kingdom-based Telegraph, Disney and Sony Pictures made 13.5 million pounds, equal to around $16,7 million, in the months after Disney said it would cease doing business in Russia.
The money came from a Russian company, Walt Disney Studios Sony Pictures Releasing (WDSSPR), created to distribute Spider-Man films in Russia. The payments were made from the Russian company to Eastern European Holdings (EEH), a company jointly owned by Disney and Sony’s Columbia Pictures division and based in London.
In the six months after Disney pulled out of the country, it received an additional half a million dollars in payments from WDSSPR. The campaign group B4Ukraine discovered Disney’s continued payments from Russia, and it is hoping to out companies still making money off its business dealings in Russia.
Neither Disney nor Sony is accused of acting inappropriately, and there is no evidence that Disney has done any business in Russia since the end of 2022.
In 2017, Disney released the Russian-language film Posledny Bogatyr (The Last Knight), which was the highest-grossing native-language film ever released by Disney. However, with the war in Ukraine dragging into its fourth year and with no end in sight, it does not appear that Disney will be doing business in Russia anytime soon.